Our church has recently become an Angel Food Ministry host site.  If you are not familiar with Angel Food Ministry, it is a ministry started by Joe & Linda Wingo and Emmanuel Praise Church in Monroe, GA.  The purpose of Angel Food is to provide quality food products to individuals and families at very affordable prices.  For $30, you can buy a box of food containing meats, fruits and/or vegetables, starches, milk, eggs, and dessert.  This box of food is designed to feed a family of four for about a week or a single individual for almost a month.  They have also started offering a “senior box” for $28, which is a box of 10 already prepared full meals that need to only be heated up and served.  Along with these boxes, there are other special meat and vegetables boxes that can be ordered.  Individuals can pay by cash, check or food stamps and can even order online using a credit or debit card.

There are no stipulations on who can order food from Angel Food; anyone can use this service.  Our church collects the orders and money.  On a Saturday morning near the end of the month, a group of volunteers pick up the food from the designated Angel Food distribution site and bring it to our church.  Another group of volunteers then divide up the food into the individual orders to that people can come and pick up the food between 8 and 9 in the morning.  For every box of food that is ordered, Angel Food donates $1 back to our church to be used for our benevolence funds.

We just finished our second month as a host site.  My wife and our current Missions Team chair are the directors of this ministry.  They have seen some amazing things already taking place through this ministry.  It started on the Sunday morning that they announced the ministry to the church.  They asked for volunteers to meet with them after the service.  They were hoping for 5-10 … they got 25!  And that number is already growing!  Perhaps even more important, about half of our orders each month are coming from individuals who are not regular attenders of our church.  This ministry is putting us in contact with families in our community.  As we receive their orders and answer their questions, we are also being provided with opportunities to hear their stories and share God’s love and grace with them.

In these difficult economic times, Angel Food Ministry is providing our church with a tool to meet people where they are.  Angel Food is already shipping out half a million boxes of food each month, and those numbers are continuing to grow.  If your church is looking for a way to help address the physical and spiritual needs of people in your community, I would encourage you to take a look at Angel Food Ministries.  Their website is http://www.angelfoodministries.com.